Music Commons^™

Singing A Wide Heart: Timbre And Sung Prayer In Senegal’S Layène Community, Margaret L. Rowley

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Layène sung prayer (called sikkar) is embedded within the religious practices of the Layène community, a minority Sufi order in Dakar, Senegal. This article explores the functions of Layène sung prayer, focusing especially on its loud, vibrational timbre. Both men and women vocalists in call-and-response sing loudly, using wide vibrato and electronic amplification to ensure that the sikkar reaches the inhabitants—both human and non-human—in the surrounding community. This article demonstrates that the distinctive timbre of Layène sung prayer serves the spiritual functions of binding the community together in spiritual and social cohesion, increasing individual and collective generosity, and demarcating …

Live Wires: The Angelus Temple And The Timbre Of Power, Catherine Provenzano

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This article is a media history and contemporary case study of The Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, founded by Aimee Semple McPherson in 1923. My analysis of the Angelus insists upon the centrality of a hyperaudible paradigm of worship that uses media to maximize the legibility of a Christian message, and, more than this, imagines that media itself as a living soul in need of redemption. Many contemporary megachurches employ savvy applications of sound and sound transmission as instruments of belonging as well as action, and these rely on high-budget investments in church infrastructure, software and personnel. I argue that …

Performing "Manly" Worship Music: Gender And Timbre At Mars Hill Church, Maren Haynes Marchesini

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Ten years ago, Mars Hill boasted fifteen campuses and 15,000 members. Amid mounting allegations of abuse and mismanagement leveled against founding pastor Mark Driscoll, the church famously collapsed, closing its doors at the end of 2014. Driscoll had built Mars Hill’s core brand around his opposition to the perceived feminization of the Christian mainstream, and appointing himself the “leader of a heterosexual male backlash” in the church and broader culture. While Driscoll’s muscular Christianity stands in a wide historical stream, Mars Hill long led the charge in establishing a youth-oriented, hipster brand of hypermasculine Calvinism. And while rhetoric and theology …

A Sunlit Ambience: How Reverb Pedals Influence The Contemporary Worship Music Imagination, Dylan Crosson

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

With the recent proliferation of scholarship on the musical elements of Contemporary Worship Music (CWM) in addition to ethnographies exploring the tradition’s inner machinations, readers now enjoy unprecedented levels of insight into the actions of human actors and their music. But what of CWM’s non-human actors? Could the instruments and musical equipment used by CWM practitioners, for example, impact evangelical piety? In this article, I entertain this question by arguing that the materiality of reverb pedals—devices used by guitarists to add artificial reverberation to their sound—influences how evangelicals conceptualize elements of their faith by introducing new imagery or enriching pre-existing …

From The Heaviest, Dirtiest Depths To The Washy Ambient Clouds: Guitar Timbre In/As Schismogenesis In North American Christianity, Joshua K. Busman, Nathan Myrick

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This essay argues that within the socio-cultural context of North American Christianity, the timbral qualities of electric guitar, with its long lineage as a site of cultural values conflict and identity negotiation, serves a theological function in the emerging and cohering sonority of digital worship. Using as comparative case studies the timbral qualities of delay and ambience as promoted and sold by Worship Tutorials as representing normative sonic values for these Christians, on the one hand, and the dialectic and schismatic deployment of distortion by the band My Epic on the other, we suggest that these timbral qualities become important …

Sounds Like 'Saudade': Eschatological Echoes In Brazilian 'Gospel' Music, Fernando Berwig Silva

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This paper analyzes the song “Saudade” by the Brazilian gospel singer Stella Laura. In the song, I argue that Stella Laura uses Brazilian timbral markers from the Sertanejo and Gospel Brazilian music genres to articulate a unique perspective on eschatology, one that is based on the affective structure of the Lusophone word ‘saudade.’ Furthermore, I contend that the song, rooted in the Brazilian nostalgic sertanejo music tradition, leans on stylistic and timbral tools to communicate the idea of saudade from heaven. Beyond lyrics that feature theological notions of origin, identity, and nostalgia, Stella Laura’s song employs timbral, poetic, …

Afternoon Of Brass: October 12, 2025, Dr. Andrew Rummel, Dr. Sharon Huff

School of Music Programs

This is nineteenth program of the 2025-2026 season.

Center for the Performing Arts

October 12, 2025

Sunday Afternoon

3:00 p.m.

The Self-Curating Musician: An Innovative Concept And An Intensive Learning Experience By Systemic Design Thinking, Joris Blanckaert, Ellen Loots, Saskia Westerduin, Pawan V. Bhansing

Journal of Arts Entrepreneurship Education

Self-curation is an emerging notion in the artistic practice that we propose as an alternative to the questioned notion of entrepreneurship in the realm of classical music. Systemic Design Thinking (SDT) methods helped conceptualize self-curation and develop an intensive, week-long learning experience. Participants validated the self-curation concept and its five components: activating creativity, seeking uniqueness, developing a discourse, understanding the performance practice and engaging communities. Our study further highlights that rather than suffering from a tension between arts and commerce, young (performing) musicians experience a tension between the expectation of the outside world that they need to be exceptional as …

Soundscapes, Pioneers, And Practices: Laying The Foundations Of The Russian Guitar, Wojciech Gurgul

Soundboard Scholar

A review of The Seven-String Guitar in Russia: Its Origins, Repertoire, and Performance Practice, 1800–50, by Oleg Timofeyev (Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2023), Worldcat, publisher's website

2025-2026 Performance Forum - October 10, 2025, Diego Suarez, Rebeca Sierra, Caroline Dratnal, Lillian Platte, Sheng Yuan Kuan, Maria Savelyeva, Kade Gordon, Patrick Hengstler, Dj Combs, Devin Foster

Performance Forum

No abstract provided.

Nathan Sherman, Viola, Department Of Music, University Of Richmond

Music Department Concert Programs

No abstract provided.

Isu Philharmonia String Orchestra: October 8, 2025, Samuel Chen

School of Music Programs

This is the eighteenth program of the 2025-2026 season.

Kemp Recital Hall

October 8, 2025

Wednesday Evening

7:30 p.m.

Gresham Duo: October 7, 2025, David Gresham, Momoko Gresham

School of Music Programs

Kemp Recital Hall

October 7, 2025

Tuesday Evening

7:30 p.m.

2025-2026 Master Class And Piano Recital - Hieyon Choi (Piano), Hie Yon Choi, Ana-Maria Uzunova, Ziling Wang

Master Classes

No abstract provided.

Dream A Little Dream Of Licensing: Jazz And The § 115 Compulsory Music Reproduction License, Jackson S. Roberg

Northwestern University Law Review

The compulsory music reproduction license codified at 17 U.S.C. § 115 allows anyone to obtain the right to record another version of, or “cover,” a previously published musical work. Invoking the compulsory license, however, comes at a dramatic cost. Under § 115(a)(2), the licensee cannot copyright any original musical material they compose for the cover without express permission from the underlying copyright owner, even if that material would otherwise be copyrightable. This limitation gravely harms jazz music, as jazz relies on dynamic recompositions of preexisting music. Jazz musicians depend on compulsory licenses to record the reinterpretative covers essential to the …

Fall Concert: Treble And Concert Choir; October 5, 2025, Mark Grizzard, Andrew Bruhn

School of Music Programs

This is the sixteenth program of the 2025-2026 season.

Center for the Performing Arts

October 5, 2025

Sunday Evening

6:00 p.m.

University Glee And Belle Voix: A New Day: Songs Of Wisdom, Love, And Hope; October 5, 2025, Tim Fredstrom, Belle Voix

School of Music Programs

This if the fifteenth program of the 2025-2026 season.

Center for the Performing Arts

October 5, 2025

Sunday Afternoon

3:00 p.m.

A New Day: Sogns Of Wisdom, Love, And Hope: University Glee And Belle Voix; October 3, 2025, Tim Fredstrom, Andrew Bruhn

School of Music Programs

This is the fifteenth program of the 2025-2026 season.

Center for the Performing Arts

October 5, 2026

Sunday Afternoon

3:00 p.m.

Ronald Crutcher, Cello, Department Of Music, University Of Richmond

Music Department Concert Programs

No abstract provided.

2025-2026 Master Class - Nancy Goeres (Bassoon), Nancy Goeres, Jacob Lomboy, Aneliya Novikova, Derek Lund, Ethan Thompson, Keegan Neely

Master Classes

No abstract provided.